Gold Flakes

The nurse pulled aside the privacy curtains that hung from the ceiling. The sun, a rare visitor during the monsoons, filled our ward with natural light. A new patient was on my right. He must have been admitted after the previous patient lost his fight. A dozen COVID patients were crammed into the narrow isolation ward at the Nainital General Hospital. Doctors and nurses performed their rounds in their PPE gear while the rest of us wore hideous hospital gowns.

The new patient, a bespectacled forty-something, sported a salt and pepper goatee and a sizable belly. He put on a white skullcap and spread a clean towel on the floor before raising his hands up next to his shoulders and muttering, “Allahu Akbar.” He then bent down, placing his forehead, knees, and palms on the ground, prostrating a few times. When he finished praying, he turned his gaze towards me and shrieked, “Dhruv?”?

“Rahim? Oh my God! It’s been what, twenty-five years?” I said.

“You in for COVID too?” he confirmed before pulling me in for a man hug. He slapped my back twice and said to me, “I guess we are stuck with each other again.”

“Abey saale, you’ve put on a ton of weight. I almost didn’t recognize you.” I said.

“And you haven’t lost much hair since high school!”?

For the next three days, Rahim and I played catchup. We soon realized our divergent lives were not as interesting as the one we shared as children. It didn’t matter Rahim was still living in Ramnagar managing his father’s timber shop, or that I lived in Delhi running a boutique hotel in Nainital. What we did for a living, who we married, whether we had kids—were boring parts of a scripted life that was of no interest to either of us. In our minds, we were still teenagers stuck in the eighties.?

Almost three decades earlier, Rahim and I studied at St. John's, a Catholic boarding school perched atop a hill in Nainital. We met for the first time when we were in third grade. Rahim had transferred from a small town school. He knew little English. And I didn’t speak much Hindi. It was perhaps the insufficiency of language that brought us together. Within weeks, we became good friends, doing things that seem silly only in retrospect.?

In the classroom, we were back benchers. We whispered unimportant matters to each other when the teacher wasn't looking. We passed around chits of paper with doodles, mostly about girls. We had a mutual dislike for physics, a subject supposed to explain the universe, but did more to confuse us than educate. We also didn’t like biology. We giggled when Mrs. Sah drew diagrams of the human genitalia.?

One day in the playground, when a few lads bullied me for not speaking in Hindi, Rahim confronted them. Even as a teenager, he knew language was a tool, not something to fight over. When the boys didn’t respond to his lecture, he stopped talking to them. For years after that, Rahim and I played cricket by ourselves, taking turns with the bat and ball.

At night, Rahim slept on the upper berth of the bunk bed we shared. When the warden turned off the lights, the dorm that was silent a minute ago awakened with childish whispers across the hall. We snacked on Dairy Milk, potato chips, and bhujia that the day-schis (day scholars) had smuggled in for us. We discussed The Hardy Boys in great detail while dismissing Nancy Drew as girly fiction. Our hormones, however, had other plans; we talked endlessly about girls. When I insisted there was an obvious difference between infatuation and love, I recall Rahim asking me, “Why can’t we simply call everything love?” We also debated the existence of God on many such nights, arguing over something even adults could not agree on.?

“Man created God,” I would say.?

“No way, God created man,” Rahim would retort.

We didn’t have the maturity to question why we were assigned a religion the minute we were born, but that didn’t stop us from our nightly philosophical discourses.

At forty-five, we were too old (and too sick) to play cricket or discuss The Hardy Boys. We ate our lunch on our recliner beds and watched the rain through a broken window. Our ward was on the top floor of the hospital that used to be a British hotel. The stone building of three floors, still intact, was nevertheless? showing its age. The weather-beaten windows creaked when we opened them. The ceiling, with its paint peeling off, revealed a good number of cracks. Below our hospital was Mall road, a tourist mecca crammed with souvenir shops and dhabas. But on that day, barring a few locals in surgical masks who roamed the streets to acquire essentials, the hill town was deserted.

“This biryani is terrible. Why is hospital food so bad?” I asked Rahim.

“Maybe COVID killed your tastebuds.”

“Possible. I’ll never forget the mutton biryani your mom made for Eid,” I said.

“Ammi makes the best biryani. She used to anyway. She died during the first wave.”

“I’m so sorry, Rahim. I lost my dad to COVID as well.”

It was almost four p.m., and we were restless. The evening chai and rusk biscuits should have been served by then. The alarm on Rahim’s phone went off. Rahim wore his skullcap and started preparing for his salah. When I asked him what he prayed for, he said, “I don’t pray for anything. I surrender to Allah.”

Rain pitter-pattered on the tin roof while digital patient monitors beeped. On Mall road, cab drivers honked with persistence. Rahim, however, removed from everything around him, shared the moment with his God. I envied his grace. A young male attendant, with an orange scarf over his neck and a tilak on his forehead, rolled his eyes as he set down the chai and snacks on the side table next to Rahim’s bed.

“Did you see what the chai fellow did?” I asked Rahim.

“What did he do?”

“He rolled his eyes when he saw you praying,” I said, “I wanted to confront him but didn’t want to start a local riot.”

“Good call, I used to be like you,” Rahim said, “People always see me as a Muslim before they see me as a human.”

“Do you remember our motto, Certa Bonum Certmen?” I asked.

“Yeah. Fight the Good Fight. But it’s exhausting. I choose to ignore ignorance instead,” Rahim said, “So, what about you? Are you religious?”

“Nope. But I don’t say man created God anymore. I now believe God exists within each of us.”

It was nine p.m., three hours before my bedtime, but I was drained. My muscles were sore, except this time, the cause was not an overdue workout. A persistent headache and a mild fever nagged me. I could not say with certainty what I ate was salty or sweet. COVID was a confusing disease. Despite the discomfort, I couldn’t take my mind off the chai fellow who rolled his eyes.

“You know, my people say nasty things about you people.” I said to Rahim.

“Like what?” he asked me

“A relative once told me, ‘My electrician is a Muslim, but a decent fellow!’”

“Nice! Is that it?” Rahim asked me, implying he has heard worse.

“These Muslims are terrible workers. They are dirty. They don’t know how to live.”

“Still not so bad. I shower twice a day, by the way.”

“Well, you need it, Rahim!”?

Rahim burst into his usual unrestrained laughter—warmhearted, sincere, and full of joy.

“Sshhh…” a voice from the far end of the room prodded us to sleep.

“Good night Rahim,” I whispered past the curtains that had been drawn for the night.

When I was about to drift off, Rahim said in a low voice, “Did you just fart?”

“Why? Was it too loud?”

“No, it just stinks!”

For breakfast the next morning, we ate aloo parathas, yogurt, and lemon pickle. I hated pickles.

“Do you remember Neema Tandon? I bumped into her a few years ago. She’s still…” Rahim hesitated.

“Hot? Of course, I remember her. She had a huge crush on me.”

“Are you kidding me, Dhruv? She was into me until class ten!”?

“And then what happened?” I asked.

“Mukesh is what happened. Not sure what she saw in him, though. I heard Mukesh now runs a pickle factory in Pune.”??

“Good thing I don’t care much for pickles!”?

There we were, two middle-aged men stuck in a COVID ward, talking about high school crushes, whereabouts of long-lost friends, and pickles. Rahim’s phone rang. The ringtone, choti choti aasha, was from A.R. Rahman’s debut album. When we heard the song the first time, we knew Rahman would change the Indian music scene, but didn't know he would be a phenomenon.?

Before he answered the phone, Rahim said to me, “This song has been my ringtone since my first cellphone.”

I said, “When I told a friend how much I love Rahman’s music, he said to me, ‘Rahman is only a converted Muslim. He was a Hindu before.’”

“I have a story that’s bang opposite,” Rahim said, “A colleague changed his name from Mohammed to Krishna. He also stopped wearing white kurtas and skullcaps, but guess what?”

“What?”

“He kept his religion. He’s a Muslim at home, but Krishna to everyone else. He traded his identity for belonging.”

“This is insane, Rahim. I’m changing topics. Do you remember, Mrs. Jacob?” I said.

“Who, the chemistry teacher?”

“No, the English teacher who caught us smoking weed. And you said, ‘It’s just a cigarette, ma’am.’”

“I laughed so hard, I got into a coughing bout,” Rahim said.

“Hey, how about we smoke a cigarette for old times’ sake?”

“If we can smuggle it in somehow.”

The next morning, during breakfast, Rahim and I plotted our game plan. We decided I would ask the nurse for cigarettes, and if she agrees, Rahim would look for a safe spot.

“Nurse, chai ke saat sutta milega?” I asked the nurse if we could get some cigarettes with our tea.

“You’re in a hospital, sir ji. Not on vacation!”

“Please, nurse. We are friends from St. John’s, 1996 batch,” I said, to make a stronger case.

“But you don’t look like you’re in school anymore,” she laughed, giving us hope.

An hour later, she slipped two Gold Flake cigarettes and a matchbox under a towel. After leaving them at the foot of my bed, she pointed towards the balcony and said, “Smoke there. Dr. Mishra starts his rounds at 7.”?

We drew the curtains before we stepped onto the balcony that was no larger than a classroom bench. I opened the heavy glass-paned wooden door, careful not to wake up other patients from their siestas. When the opening wasn’t wide enough for two nearly obese men to enter, I forced the door open. The heavy wood, having expanded during the monsoons, screeched as it rubbed against the stone floor. The deck hadn’t been cleaned in weeks. On it lay a few cigarette stubs, some crushed Bisleri bottles, and a crumpled copy of the India Today magazine that asked the question, “Have we knocked out COVID?”

The wind was strong. I turned towards a corner and tried to light the match.?

After five failed attempts, Rahim said to me, “How hard is it to light a damn cigarette? Let me show you how it’s done.”

Rahim guarded the matchstick with both his hands and lit both our cigarettes with one swift strike.?

“Are you a victim of good morning messages on WhatsApp as well?” Rahim asked me, taking in the first drag of his cigarette.

“If only people practiced half of what they forward,” I said, “Let me send you something I received today.”??

The message I sent Rahim started with a warning: ‘This is not fake news, this is an official message from The Red Cross.’ What followed was more ominous: a list of COVID patients in the Kumaon region, almost all of them, Muslims. They made the message more credible by throwing in a few token Hindu names.

“Wait till you see this,” Rahim said, and forwarded me a message. It was the same message, but his list contained mostly Hindu names.

“We are just WhatsApp brokers living in our own bubbles.” I said.

“Why do people do this, Dhruv?”

“I’m not sure, Rahim. Maybe they don’t want us to be friends.”

A thick mountain fog swallowed Ayarpatta, the same hill where Rahim and I went to school. The mist then moved westward, thinning along the way, tardily lifting to reveal a valley recently greened by the monsoons. The harsh afternoon sun turned the sky blue and a solitary golden cloud hovered over the ridge. Pahadi women in their tattered cardigans attended to their garden before they pinned sarees and petticoats on a clothesline. A temple somewhere rang its bells.

“That felt so good. It’s been ages.” I said as I took in my last drag.

“Remember what we used to say about the last drag in school?” Rahim asked me.

“The last drag of a cigarette is like the first kiss of a woman. How can I forget that?”

We laughed. Smoking a cigarette, in secret no less, brought back memories from boarding school. On Saturdays, when we could venture out, Rahim and I frequented a chai shop we used to call Sam Fox, named after the shopkeeper lady’s large bosoms. We ordered Veg Maggi for Rahim and bun omelet with extra mirch for myself. We used to buy loose Gold Flake cigarettes, never a whole pack. Our weekly indulgence was punctuated with meaningless banter and wafts of cigarette smoke.?

Rahim stubbed out his cigarette on the balcony grill and was unsure what to do with what was left of it. He aimed for, but missed, the dumpster on the street below. As he stepped back into the ward, I called out, “Hey Rahim!”

“Yeah?”

“You’re a Muslim, but a good friend, Rahim,” I said to him and hugged him.?

“Good times, Dhruv. By the way, you look ridiculous in that hospital gown!”

“Look who’s talking.”

Two days later, Rahim and I waited for Dr. Mishra to share our COVID test results. I was reminded of the last time Rahim and I met at the school admin office, waiting for our 12th board exam results. When the clerk glued our fate on the notice board, we were relieved we passed physics, a subject that had scarred our childhood.?

Dr. Mishra walked into the ward with the COVID test results in his hand.

“So, what would you do if you were given ten days to live?” I whispered to Rahim.

“I’ll look for Neema Tandon. You?”

“I’ll join you.”

****